Much is at stake and riding on tomorrow’s election in Croton. It represents a golden opportunity for citizens of good will in Croton to restore reason and decorum to village government. To this end, Crotonblog endorses the team of Ann Gallelli, Sally Odland and Leo Wiegman. Here are only two of our reasons for making this endorsement:

The Case Against the Alliance Party: Blatant Lies and Misrepresentation of Facts. Croton voters can strike a blow for truth and reason by rejecting the small group that calls itself the Alliance Party and whose specialty has been purveying groundless fears. By spreading outright lies and distortions as reasons for concern for the public health and welfare and without citing any scientific evidence, these rabble rousers have created a veritable universe of lies, even enlisting citizens of other states to put pressure on Croton voters in support of their fabrications.

Some of their mean-spirited falsehoods have reached astronomical proportions. For example, in presentations at public meetings and in its printed materials, the Alliance Party claims that any return of a C&D materials-handling operation to 1A Croton Point Avenue will bring 30,000 trucks a year to Croton. During the election campaign, this number mysteriously jumped from a previously widely touted 20,000 trucks a year.

Let’s examine the arithmetic behind this number: If we assume that the site operates 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 52 weeks of the year and subtracting 10 days of closure for legal holidays, this yields 124,200 minutes of annual operation. To accommodate 30,000 trucks a year, which is to say 120 trucks a day, would require one truck to enter the facility, unload and exit every four minutes—a miracle of scheduling and a physical impossibility. Yet the Alliance Party insists that 30,000 trucks a year will beset Croton. Alliance Party Mathematical Accuracy Score: Zero.

The Case Against the Alliance Party: Harassment of Village Board Members. This same small group has not hesitated to impugn the motives of trustees and citizens who do not agree with them, going so far as to make libelous charges of graft and accusing certain board members of being “on the take.” This crowd complains about the honest criticism leveled at them on Crotonblog—yet they applaud crudely drawn cartoons depicting their opponents as low forms of life. An anagram of ALLIANCE is ALL NICE. Don’t you believe it.

By voting for candidates who offer a rational and reasonable level of discourse in local government, you will signal to the irresponsible rabble-rousers that you are tired of their semi-monthly harangues that monopolize village board meetings. You know who they are—the usual suspects: The officious individual who flounces in like a call house madam and proceeds to lecture the board. Her prolix performance over, she gathers up her legal pads and exits; the nitty-gritty of village business is not her concern. Then there’s the unctuous individual who only lacks the standard green eyeshade and sleeve-garters of the mousy bookkeeper; his specialty is to seek clarification of the obvious. Then there’s the adenoidal former village trustee who manages to mangle the English language even more than Prof. Irwin Corey. And there’s the professional mom whose schtick is saying in her “widdle girl” voice, “I’m just a housewife who doesn’t understand how government works.” We must not forget Croton’s scenery-chewing male prima donna who alternates between threatening bodily harm to trustees and threatening to move from the village. And, last but not least, with luck we might even discourage the sour-tasting dyspeptic effusions of our tiresome, cud-chewing, self-appointed village scold with a distorted sense of village geography. One interesting demographic statistic: Many of the usual suspects are comparatively recent arrivals from elsewhere. Crotonblog wonders whether the Bronx and Brooklyn have fobbed off their malcontents on Croton?

Twice a month, village board members are subjected to insults in two successive nightly sessions labeled “Citizen Participation” in which the participants exhibit the anger and unreason of a lynch mob. Even more damaging, the venomous vituperation of this group tends to discourage other citizens from speaking out in meetings or in the pages of local newspapers out of fear of being verbally attacked or of having the paint on their automobiles “keyed” in retaliation. Crotonblog knows whereof it speaks. Alliance Party Good Citizenship Score: Zero.

For these cogent reasons, Crotonblog urges all citizens of goodwill who care about Croton and its public face to put a stop to the growing influence of this know-nothing band of rabble-rousers. We urge a vote for the team of Ann Gallelli, Sally Odland and Leo Wiegman. Vote, vote as if the quality of your life and the life of this village depended on it. Because, when the chips are down, that’s really what’s at stake in this election.

“This “truck scare” was a clever, if shallow schtick in the same way that calling us the “cash for trash” gang was. These rhetorical tactics dragged the village’s election discourse into the gutter.”

In their name calling I feel that they were more the “Our Gang” mentality. And no minds other than the Little Rascals could come up with that dreadful flyer with the rat and the cockroach on it that was distributed days before the election. You’d think the residents of Croton could see through this childish reasoning and run from it! Unfortunately……

Maybe next year, we’ll have to come up with a shtick first, then base our whole platform around this schtick (just kidding!).

I don’t know who wrote the editorial posted today on the Crotonblog endorsing Ann Gallelli for Mayor and Sally Odland and me for Village Trustee.

Some “over the top” postings on the Crotonblog make me cringe. But today’s editorial is quite valuable. It debunks one GOP mantra that has bothered me for weeks.

Greg, Tom, Sue and their supporters have repeatedly used the threat of “30,000 trucks.” They claim that Ann, Sally, Charlie and I somehow favor such outlandish truck traffic on the streets of Croton.

This accusation is utter hogwash, of course. But any fiction, repeated oft enough, may begin to seem true.

This “truck scare” was a clever, if shallow schtick in the same way that calling us the “cash for trash” gang was. These rhetorical tactics dragged the village’s election discourse into the gutter.

Therefore, Ann, Sally and I made a great deal of effort to highlight seven goals we want to work on in 2007. In this context, only 1 of the 7 goals we have deals with the waste transfer station. The other 6 ideas are positive, concrete steps in finance, economic development, Croton River preservation and more—all achievable within 12 months of today.

Whatever the outcome tonight after the polls close, I have no regrets about our proposing a diverse agenda and avoiding crude, sound-bites.

Croton’s residents are smart. They can handle the details of our complex and real world. We don’t need to resort to sound-bites as discourse.

It’s us politicians that need to learn English plainspeak—which lies somewhere north of the gutter sniping simplistic sound-bite and south of the cloud scraping somnambular soliloquy.